When I see him, he looks nothing like I’d ever imagined. The face isn’t hard or gaunt or even stuck with misaligned teeth. Instead, it’s almost friendly. I fancy I can see the pale features smiling at me from beneath the black hood. I try to get up, but the pressing pain holds me in place. I feel the splinters of broken ribs poke through my flesh like shattered glass. Lungs feel like they’re brimming with white hot coals. He frowns a little as he bends down towards me.
“Come on,” he says with lips that don’t move. “It’s time to go.”
“Who are you?” I cough, the words taste like old pennies.
“Don’t be stupid, dude. You know who I am. Now come on. I’ve got a butt-load of appointments still to get to.”
He reaches down towards me, his hand passing through the crumpled car roof as if it were a hologram. As his fingers touch my skin, all straight lines seem to blur. I feel a pinch around the base of my spine. A pop, like something being disconnected. The sensation is like stripping off wet clothes as he tugs me out. Suddenly, I realise the pain has stopped. As I stand there on the tarmac beside him, it’s hard to disregard the blinding glow that everything has taken, as if before this moment I had been looking at the world through an opaque plastic sheet. The colours shimmer like a Hogmanay sky. A pair of paramedics hurry towards us carrying a stretcher between them. As the first passes through me, I taste the hollow sweetness of the spearmint gum in her mouth. I know the chill of the stretcher buckles as if they had been dropped down the back of my shirt like ice cubes. When the second body steps through me, I share his shiver as the hairs on his arms stand up like pins pressed through a sheet of paper. A crowd of rubberneckers press against the police tape, their phones pointed in my direction. Some are even snapping selfies.
“Crazy, huh?” he says. For the first time, I really look at him, and something completely out of the realm of all possibility hits me.
“You’re wearing shorts?”
And he is. His board shorts are printed with a white floral design over a sky blue background. The knees which poke out below are as pale as sun-bleached bone.
“Figured I’d try something different today.”
“How’s that working out?”
His face wrinkles as he raises an eyebrow which is really not an eyebrow at all. I’m not even sure that it is even skin that covers his face.
“Hey, sure, be a smart ass,” he says. “If I were you, I’d be making the best of my last few moments of ‘not burning for all eternity,’ but, heck, what do I know?” He locks his glare at me and his features distort further. The sunken spaces, which had held concerned eyes a second before, disintegrate into pits of bottomless shadow. My heart would be pounding if it weren’t still wrapped in the tin foil ball that used to be my Ford Focus. I feel the despair scratching at me like a horde of hissing cats. I realise I can no longer close my eyes to shut out the world. I sink deeper. I stare down at the wreck. Then he elbows me.
“Just kidding, man. Chill out.”
I don’t know how I’m laughing, but that’s what I’m doing. The images of sizzling flesh and devils hacking at my insides with razor blades begin to subside.
“Sorry, bud. In this job, you’ve gotta take your fun when you can get it.”
“That’s cruel!”
“Don’t worry you have literally forever to get over it.” He slipped back his sleeve displaying an assortment of wristwatches. There are a gold Rolex, a miniature sundial with opal inlays, and an antique pocket watch glued to a piece of ragged Velcro. Another timepiece with both its hands and numbers removed and a pristine deep-sea diver’s watch with green plastic accents. He pushed the fabric almost up to his shoulder to examine a Hello Kitty digital just above his elbow. His face furrows as he squints at the blindingly pink thing. He taps at it with a finger which is neither bone nor skin then raises it to the side of his head. The small watch starts beeping, a pitch like a puppy just learning to bark. “And there’s the other one!” A grin distorts his face, pulling the corners of his mouth above where ears should have been. “Wait here. Seriously, no wandering off. I don’t have time to waste looking for you.”
He moves towards the other vehicle and I wonder why I didn’t see it before. Is the end so traumatic that you just forget? I don’t really want to look at the carnage but curiosity gets the better of me. What remains of the buttercup-yellow roadster is haloed in broken glass. Plastic chunks from the trim litter the tarmac like trampled potato chips. I stare at a severed wing mirror for a long moment, before I notice the wet thing beside my ankle. The ragged chunk of flesh is still twitching as it empties its contents onto the asphalt. I don’t know how the ice water chill crawls down my spine, but it does. My new friend is pulling another man out of the wreckage and the portly man is screaming obscenities at him. Things like “Do you know who I am?” and “I’m James fucking Mansfield that’s who!” The fellow in the board shorts tries for diplomacy at first. But when it doesn’t take, he just grabs the raging asshole and carries him under one arm as if he were a surfboard. James struggles; he kicks and swears. What an idiot!
“Come on. This way,” the hooded dude says to me “Time to go.”
We walk through the archway as if we are just regular folks on a Sunday stroll to the park. Well, except for James. He’s still bucking. He’s screaming like a cat with its genitals caught in a car door. I think maybe he’s knows where he’s going. The space around us darkens and shifts and then we’re standing in a hallway. The walls look like carved stone. There are etchings, but I can’t make them out in the dimness. The smell that overwhelms me is so out of place.
“Is that,”—I sniff—“Popcorn?”
My shorted friend nods.
“Why does it smell like popcorn?”
He shrugs.
“If I ever find out, I’ll come tell you. Cool?” He turns to look at James who seems to have tuckered himself out.
“If you promise to behave, I’ll put you down. Sound good?” James grudgingly agrees and the three of us walk on in silence. The halls wind. The bends in them shift like the joints of a gargantuan spider. It’s disorientating, but I try to stay close. When I smell the sulphur, it begins to dawn on me that I might have been duped. The terror begins to cluster within me or whatever it is that is left of me. I turn to run but the guy in the hood seizes me by the arm in a grip that I’m certain could tear metal like newspaper. He’s got James fucking Mansfield too and he’s dragging us towards a door shaped scab. James is screaming again, he’s kicking, clawing and biting. I’d like to pretend that what I do is any better, but it isn’t. I’m crying like a little girl with a skinned knee. Mother would have been so proud. We pass through the portal and tang of hot sweat forces its way into me. As supple tissue compresses underfoot I can almost taste the writhing mass of fornicating flesh which comprises the walls and floor of the immense space. Eyeless faces are fused into the expanse of gyrating skin, licking their lips with black slug tongues. Tangled limbs and mismatched breasts protrude from the sea of hot meat, shifting like hellish anemones in an unseen current. He forces us towards the centre of the mess where a bitter black shadow waits wrapped in amorphous tendrils of smoke. The things head little more than a septic grin of canine teeth. I give up my struggling. There is no escape.
“Oh hey, Dave,” it hisses “We love the shorts.”
“Zip it, dipshit. Got one to drop off.”
I begin to pray like I’ve never prayed before. I apologise for that time I peed in the public swimming pool. For the time I stole towels from that B&B in Swaziland, even for smashing that old guy’s windshield that one night I got shitfaced with Casey Lynch. James has gone silent too. He must be doing the same as I am. I’m too busy concentrating to even wonder what he’s praying about. After what could realistically have been an eternity, Dave throws James to the floor in front of the shade. Scrambling to his feet, James makes a dash for the gate, but a mass of black hands rises from the ground tearing his ankles out from under him. Tears stream down his face he hits the ground hard and they hold him fast.
“Careful. He’s a feisty one,” Dave says. “Is your boss around?”
“Out on an errand.” The twisting black shadow offers nothing further but a ragged grin. James wails as countless hands dig elongated fingers into his flesh.
“No screaming,” chuckles the shade “We haven’t even started yet.” The thing’s laugh sounds like a pig gargling molasses. James’s screaming doesn’t let up as the hands drag him downwards and through the floor.
Dave turns to me—“Come on, I’m running late.”
As we make our way back towards the shifting hallway, I can’t help but look back over my shoulder. Although we are far from the black gate, the wails of the damned still echo down the hall. And my mind begins to wonder.
“Yeah, she’s down there,” he says.
“What?”
“Your mother. You were wondering if she was in Hell, right?”
I nod as a cold shame curls up within me like a dead kitten.
“Gluttony,” he added.
I take a few minutes to digest this and quickly come to the conclusion that I’m not even a little surprised. Mother had always loved food. Her greatest agony in life had always been that it had never loved her back.
“Why did it call you Dave?”
“Now that, my friend, is another story,” he said then began whistling “Don’t Worry Be Happy” in a sweeter than sweet tone.
[bctt tweet=”OCTOBER TERROR 2018 Short Story Award – Entry #33 ‘Dave’ By Myk Pilgrim – Enjoy all this terrific, disturbing material you have in your hands, lots of horror stories at your disposal for your dark delight and vote!” username=”theboldmom”]
On October 23rd we’ll close submissions and open a poll for the readers to choose their favourite one! You’ll have a week to make your choice and on October 31st we’ll announce the winner!!!
